Kate Parry of the St. Paul Pioneer Press planned this exercise to help reporters who are used to reporting mainly by writing down what people say become better at the observational reporting that's so essential to narrative writing.
Back to Reporting Exercises

Reporting with all senses

In organizing the next Northern Writers Workshop for Knight Ridder, I've been drawing on the ideas in the excellent "Active Training" by Mel Silberman to develop a very participatory approach.

One of the exercises I'm planning to try is something I picked up from Jan Winburn of the Baltimore Sun at the Nieman conference on narrative editing earlier this year. It's called "Reporting With All Your Senses." The aim is to help reporters who are used to reporting mainly by writing down what people say become better at the observational reporting that's so essential to narrative writing.

In the version I'm planning, the writers will be split into teams of five. Each group will be sent to a different location near our training site in downtown St. Paul. Each person will be given an assignment to observe at that site for a half hour using only one sense: sight, hearing, touch, taste or smell.

Then the team will write a description intended to "put me there" -- and end that description by leaving me with a sense of intrigue about what will happen next at that location. We'll reconvene to read the descriptions and see if anyone can guess where the teams went.

Back to Reporting Exercises